A tale of two countries
If you googled the phrase ‘failed state’ this past week, the search result would toss up links to several online definitions of the same as well as news stories and blog posts about two countries: Pakistan and Mexico.
Separated by oceans, continents and socio-political contexts, the two countries find themselves facing similar crises. While one tackles militants and the other fights drug cartels — vastly different organisations — the fallout has been similar: destabilisation, compromised governance and deteriorating security.
Interestingly, the stakes for the United States in both countries are also alike, leading to parallel levels — if different versions — of US involvement. Comparing the challenges faced by Pakistan and Mexico, therefore, is a useful thought exercise that might shed some light on what our government might do to win its internal war against militancy.
In January this year, a report released by the Pentagon pointed out the similarities of Pakistan and Mexico’s predicament and warned that both countries could face ‘rapid and sudden’ collapse. The report notes that the government, judicial and law-enforcement infrastructure in both nations is under assault, resulting in a high risk of implosion. The threat to the US in the event that either nation might fail is also outlined in detail. Sadly, solutions to the problems are less forthcoming.
The problems, however, are uncannily similar. In Mexico, drug cartels are openly defiant of government writ. Rampant kidnappings in an effort to safeguard smuggling routes have been reported on both sides of the US-Mexico border. Gun battles between drug gangs and the police are frequent, with the traffickers often coming out on top as they are better equipped with rocket-propelled grenades, anti-tank rockets, heavy machine guns, night-vision goggles and sophisticated communications technologies.
Not surprisingly, then, police officials and army generals have been blatantly abducted, tortured and killed. Last month, in Mexico’s most violent city, Juarez, signs were widely posted stating that unless the police chief stepped down, a law-enforcement officer would be killed every 48 hours (the police chief resigned immediately). Drug gangs in Juarez have also promised to hunt down the city’s mayor. And in an eerie nod to Islamic militants, narco-traffickers are increasingly beheading their victims. Throughout the country, more than 5,000 people were killed in drug-related violence in 2008 and over 1,000 have already been killed in 2009.
One can’t help but be struck by the parallels. Here, too, kidnappings are on the rise, gun assaults and assassination attempts are increasingly common, and bomb blasts — suicide or otherwise — are claiming too many innocent lives. Through the autumn of 2008, the Pakistani military came face-to-face with the sophisticated weapons and trenches of the Taliban in the tribal belt, where many of its officers were abducted. Before the recent peace-for-Sharia deal in Swat, militants were beheading innocents, attacking government infrastructure in the form of girls’ schools, and targeting law-enforcement personnel.
Militant activities caused widespread demoralisation amongst the police force of the Frontier province and led to unprecedented desertion. Mercifully, the death toll racked up by the militants is less than that of drug cartels — in 2008, 66 suicide attacks caused 965 deaths across Pakistan. But that number seems fated to rise.
Interestingly, the similarities extend beyond each country’s troubles to governance issues. In both Pakistan and Mexico, endemic corruption and the unpreparedness of the respective police and military forces have been blamed for the success of militants and drug cartels. For all their problems, both countries remain hell-bent on not being described as ‘failed states’ — in Mexico, politicians talk about ‘failed enclaves’, areas where violence spikes, while their Pakistani counterparts emphasise the unique governing circumstances of Fata and Pata (a tactic that will have to change in the aftermath of Lahore). Lastly, both countries are dependent on the US — whether they like it or not — to help get them out of the messes they find themselves in.
From the US perspective, the destabilisation of either Pakistan or Mexico would be catastrophic. Indeed, both countries have been described as ‘a threat to US national security’. A collapse in Pakistan would create a nationwide haven for militants and expose the country’s nuclear weapons to misuse. A Mexican implosion, meanwhile, would spill thousands of migrants and a robust drug trafficking infrastructure across US borders. With the nature of US involvement in both countries, however, the similarities end.
In Mexico, the army is a cohesive entity, loyal to the civilian government. Mexican President Felipe Calderon has so far deployed 25,000 troops, but to little avail. For that reason, the US army is now stepping in to train Mexican troops to take on drug gangs. Moreover, the US government is helping Mexico to crack down on gun trafficking (the parallel smuggling enterprise that keeps drug cartels well-armed).
Last week, US Attorney General Eric Holder declared that the ban on importing assault rifles to the US would be enforced (to prevent their subsequent smuggling into Mexico). The US government has also approved a $10m package to crack down on gun-trafficking networks. In other words, the attack against drug cartels is being launched on both the martial and policy levels.
In Pakistan, meanwhile, longstanding tensions between the army and civilian government make coherent action against the militants impossible. The army’s scattered loyalties and propensity for double games have also been the subject of much local consternation. Troop deployment in the northern areas and tribal belt has thus proved largely unsuccessful, failing to stem militancy and instead causing collateral damage and earning civilian ire.
It doesn’t help that the Pakistani government is not consistent in its strategy against the militants, switching constantly between confrontation and negotiation. (In Mexico, negotiating with a drug cartel would be totally out of the question; given the similar methodologies of the militants, however, you’d think the same logic would apply here.)
The government’s pandering to cultural quirks is also problematic. In any situation where militias threaten the state, de-weaponisation seems like a good idea. In Swat, however, militants recently engaged in a semantic tango, insisting that they would ‘lay down’ — rather than surrender — their arms, since a Pakhtun could not be expected to live without his gun.
Finally, unlike Mexico, Pakistan has not been able to utilise support from the US army in productive ways. In the absence of open collaboration, Pakistan is deprived of counter-terrorist troop-training, resource-building and intelligence-sharing. Learning from that Central American example, Pakistan should stick to one strategy and enhance the capabilities of its military in the fight against militancy.
More importantly, Pakistan should heed the warning of the Mexican example, where the rewards of drug trafficking are enabling cartels to out-arm the state. Recently, growing evidence of the link between the Taliban and Afghanistan’s drug trade has been emerging. In February, it was reported that the Taliban generate between $300m and $400m a year from drug trafficking, a figure that was widely understood to be a gross under-estimate. If drug-related financing were to increasingly spill over to militants in Pakistan, they would have access to unlimited financing for state-of-the-art weapons and communications technology. In that case, Pakistan will be saddled with its own — and Mexico’s — problems.
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